Black film festival gets new name, same direction

Tuesday

The seven-year itch lasted a little longer for the Cine Noir Film Festival. Moving into its ninth year, the festival is changing names, moving through a rough patch and getting on with its life.

The seven-year itch lasted a little longer for the Cine Noir Film Festival. Moving into its ninth year, the festival is changing names, moving through a rough patch and getting on with its life.Rhonda Bellamy, festival director, said the name was changed to the North Carolina Black Film Festival for a variety of reasons. The new title connects it with the area's strong film community, more clearly says what it is and is easier to pronounce.“It just made it easier on everybody,” she said.The change in name doesn't mean a change in focus or quality, Bellamy said. Just as in the past eight years, the N.C. Black Film Festival will feature more than 20 films by black filmmakers or with an African-American theme.The festival will be held March 18-21 at the Cameron Art Museum.This year's opening night feature film, “Black Dynamite,” was written and directed by Elizabeth City native Scott Sanders. Sanders was raised in Washington, D.C., and graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he majored in radio, TV and motion pictures.He began his career as a writer working on TV shows such as “A Different World,” “Roc” and “The Wayans Brothers.”The 1998 HBO film “Thick as Thieves” marked his directorial debut.“Black Dynamite,” his newest film, is a play off the 1970s American “blaxploitation” films. Following in the footsteps of “Superfly,” “Shaft” and “Cleopatra Jones,” “Black Dynamite” offers the audience plenty of action and clever dialogue.In the film, violence erupts when “The Man” kills the brother of Black Dynamite, played by Michael Jai White. Sanders will host a Q&A after the screening.The festival ends with another film made by a North Carolinian. The documentary “Obama in North Carolina: The Path to History” was written and directed by Cash Michaels.Michaels, a longtime writer for The Wilmington Journal, documents the portion of Obama's 2008 presidential campaign that occurred in North Carolina. He also weaves in information about how his political journey relates to black history, from the Jim Crow era through the 1960s civil rights movement.The N.C. Black Film Festival will have one difference from its predecessor: More workshops are planned for the public and for participating filmmakers.Moviegoers will get to choose from free workshops that include “Going to the Show,” an interactive presentation that documents the experience of moviegoing in North Carolina, from the introduction of projected motion pictures (1896) to the end of the silent film era (1930). It features in-depth information about the black moviegoing experience in Wilmington, including profiles of every known movie venue operating in the city from 1897 to 1950.“They took fire insurance records and combined those with maps to find them all,” Bellamy said.“Going to the Show” is arranged by film historian Robert Allen in association with the University Library of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill through the Documenting the American South initiative.Bellamy said organizers worked extra-hard this year to ensure the festival had the same number of quality films and workshops, even though they were dealing with a much leaner budget. “We're dealing with half the revenue that we normally deal with, which we barely had enough anyway,” Bellamy said.The economy and cash-strapped sponsors are the main culprits. Bellamy pointed out that even the Hollywood Black Film Festival was canceled this year for economic reasons.The N.C. Black Film Festival, however, goes on. Cash prizes will be awarded to the best works in each genre. For more information, including descriptions of each movie, go to BlackArtsAlliance.org.